DEI Inc. v. Academic Freedom

Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder argue that we should not kid ourselves about the threat university DEI bureaucracies pose to academic freedom, but is there a better way?

Reflecting on Hamline University's disgraceful decision to fire an adjunct professor for showing a painting of Muhammad in an art history class, Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder argue in the Chronicle of Higher Education that DEI, as it has become ensconced in many universities (what they call "DEI Inc.) can pose a threat to academic freedom.

What is "DEI Inc" Here is how they describe it:

DEI Inc. is a logic, a lingo, and a set of administrative policies and practices. The logic is as follows: Education is a product, students are consumers, and campus diversity is a customer-service issue that needs to be administered from the top down. ("Chief diversity officers," according to an article in Diversity Officer Magazine,"are best defined as 'change-management specialists.'") DEI Inc. purveys a safety-and-security model of learning that is highly attuned to harm and that conflates respect for minority students with unwavering affirmation and validation.

Lived experience, the intent-impact gap, microaggressions, trigger warnings, inclusive excellence. You know the language of DEI Inc. when you hear it. It's a combination of management-consultant buzzwords, social justice slogans, and "therapy speak." The standard package of DEI Inc. administrative "initiatives" should be familiar too, from antiracism trainings to bias-response teamsand mandatory diversity statements for hiring and promotion.

Note their emphasis on how DEI programs are structured and administered, rather than the purposes such programs ostensibly serve. Khalid and Snyder are not arguing against genuine efforts to diversify college campuses and foster greater inclusion of those from different cultures or backgrounds.

As they discuss, what happened at Hamline is the natural consequence of creating and empowering DEI Inc within a university campus. It's a consequence of the policies and practices, not the end goals.

But lest one think this is a "right-wing" complaint against diversity as a goal, Khalid and Snyder also criticize "anti-woke" efforts from the Right:

The censorship of ideas because students with particular political beliefs might take offense is precisely what's happening across the country with anti-critical-race-theory legislation.The notion of harm is central to these "divisive concepts" laws, which have used Trump's now-revoked 2020 Executive Order 13950 as a template. Among the things prohibited in this EO was that "any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex."That white students could shut down discussions of "white privilege" and "structural inequality" because they make them uncomfortable is a most egregious affront to academic freedom. Laws like Florida's "Stop WOKE Act" underscore that policies oriented around harm-avoidance in the classroom are educational dead ends.

Any agenda, ideology, or institutional assumption that students need to be protected from ideas that may make them uncomfortable is a threat to academic freedom.

As they conclude:

To safeguard high-quality teaching that powerfully and accurately communicates our disciplines and fields, academic freedom must be vigorously defended. Students, DEI administrators and other campus stakeholders should understand that professors have the right to decide what and how to teach based on their academic expertise and their pedagogical goals. They should also know that there is no academic freedom without academic responsibility. Academic freedom is not a license to mouth off or teach whatever material suits our fancy. Moreover, when thorny issues arise pertaining to classroom instruction, we have a responsibility to listen to students' concerns and take them seriously. This does not mean, however, that students should be able to dictate the curriculum.

The Hamline case should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who cares about classroom teaching, critical thinking, and the future of higher education. Some may see this controversy as an exception or an outlier. It's not. It's a bellwether of how DEI Inc. is eroding academic freedom. Let's not forget it took an outpouring of sustained, high-publicity resistance, not to mention a lawsuit, for Hamline to soften its charge of "Islamophobia" against Prater and affirm its commitment to academic freedom.

When institutions proclaim that academic freedom and inclusion coexist in a kind of synergistic harmony, they are trafficking in PR-driven wishful thinking. In the hardest cases, there is no way of upholding an "all are welcome here" brand of inclusion while simultaneously defending academic freedom. Instead, we should turn to the wise words of Hanna Holborn Gray, former president of the University of Chicago: "Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think."

Comments

[Ben_]

So the point is that DEI could be a problem?

Ok. Thanks for that.

[Sarcastr0]

This ‘DEI office are all bad, but because of how they do their job not their goals’ is too cute by half. It’s overgeneralizing and then trying to split hairs.

Lived experience, the intent-impact gap, microaggressions, trigger warnings, inclusive excellence. You know the language of DEI Inc. when you hear it. It’s a combination of management-consultant buzzwords, social justice slogans, and “therapy speak.”

This is not how they are administered, this is just they use terminology you don’t like. It makes me cringe as well, and I’m sure there are plenty of crap DEI offices. But despite what Prof. Adler says, this is just grudgeposting.

what happened at Hamline is the natural consequence of creating and empowering DEI Inc within a university campus. It’s a consequence of the policies and practices, not the end goals. First sentence contradicts the second.

When institutions proclaim that academic freedom and inclusion coexist in a kind of synergistic harmony, they are trafficking in PR-driven wishful thinking 2 things in tension does not mean they cannot coexist.

I’m all for speech and academic freedom protections applying to DEI office policy like any other office’s policy. But this article keeps advocating for that, while laying a (badly supported) foundation that goes a lot farther than that.

[y81]

No, firing professors and threatening students is how the programs are administered. The jargon is just the way you recognize this particular evil, just like "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "master race" are phrases characteristic of particular ideologies. What's your point?

[Sarcastr0]

How common do you think firing professors happens?

The jargon is just the way you recognize this particular evil
Dunno if I think therapist jargon means you're evil. But I do think you're picking up what is being laid down: for all the article's protestations that they object to the means not the ends, the upshot is broadly saying DEI programs are fundamentally bad.

[y81]

Sarcastro: "But true DEI has never been tried!"

[Sarcastr0]

No; more true DEI is currently all over the place and not causing much trouble.

I'm not sure how efficacious it is, which is a legit line of attack IMO. This 'you can't be inclusive and free at the same time' is nonsense.

[Ed Grinberg]

true DEI is currently all over the place and not causing much trouble.

Apparently some (most?) universities now maintain a "tip-line" for students to "report" their classmates for politically-incorrect speech. Is this part of your "true DEI," working as intended?

[y81]

Inclusivity removes your freedom to display pictures of Mohammad, or to use the expression "trap house," so it is incompatible with what normal people would consider normal freedoms.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The jargon is just fancy gibberish ginned up to make routine and/or stupid concepts sound intelligent.

[Sarcastr0]

No, it's not, bevis. It means things. I don't like it, but it's intelligible even if you don't wanna learn what it means.

[Nige]

Many of those buzzwords have been co-opted from language used by non-white and other marginalised people to describe common and repeated experiences, and their strategies for coping with them. The succesful process of regularly turning them into terms of mockery and derision is right-wing culture war supremacy. Adopting them as corporate-speak on the one hand inadevrtanly supports this process, because nobody likes corporate-speak, but on the other hand validates them, too, so they endure past the mockery and derision despite the right succesfully persuading so many people that they’re icky. Mind you, since the right adopted the position that white kids shouldn’t be upset by being taught that white people owned slaves, you don’t hear so much about trigger warnings, safe spaces and snowflakes any more.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The problem is that there’s a built in bias. Virtually all of the people who want to work in a DEI capacity are oriented one way politically. Virtually all of the people who teach/train them are oriented the same way politically. So you get a reinforcing loop that when put into practice is leaning massively toward one political side, resulting in a significant proportion of the people being overseen having no chance of the DEI people even listening to them, much less deciding in their favor.

Additionally, as the offices get larger more and more people rely on there being plenty of incidents and training sessions to justify keeping the positions in place. There’s zero incentive to see a complaint and conclude that “there’s nothing here”.

And sarcastro before you even go there, I AM NOT CLAIMING A CONSPIRACY. It’s just a built in bias in the system - a massive one - that nobody in that system cares to overcome.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Right. It's an orthodoxy so iron-clad that no one needs to even look at the facts of any individual case. If anyone has any doubt that DEI is all bad, all they have to do is reconsider it as, "DEI, Inc."

[bevis the lumberjack]

That's.....not what I said.

You need to take your complaint up with the author of this article.

[Randal]

No, the problem isn't built-in bias. That's just your right-wing cult fantasy overlords talking again. And you think you're "moderate." Know thyself.

There are two actual problems with DEI offices.

1. Their existence as enforcers makes diversity and inclusion seem less like a shared value and more like a threat. Better to make diversity and inclusion a direct responsibility of individuals in the community, alongside principles such as mutual respect. People should feel good about acting in inclusive ways, not scared of the consequences of stepping on an eggshell.

2. As an office, it requires a budget, and therefore it has to justify itself. That means it has an incentive to encourage students to file complaints and then to escalate them into big, visible incidents. That way, the DEI office can facilitate a resolution to the incident and chalk up a win for bureaucracy. This is the reason they foster over-sensitivity among students, not "bias."

[lhfry]

And significant resources are devoted to financing the DEI bureaucracy to the detriment of other claims on these same resources. Just one example: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/university-of-michigan-spends-more-than-18-million-on-dei-staff-salary-benefits-report/

[Randal]

Right, and after $18M, the effort backfired and made things worse. For the above two reasons, if you want my opinion.

[Sarcastr0]

There are lots of jobs that are oriented one way politically; that's insufficient to declare the profession bad. Reinforcing loops like you describe are a worry, but hardly determinative; sociology is not so simple.

a significant proportion of the people being overseen having no chance of the DEI people even listening to them.
Unless you're just saying 'people who don't believe in inclusion won't get a lot of traction with the inclusion office' which I don't think you are, I don't believe you can just assume DEI offices broadly don't do criticism based on some theorycrafting.

I don't like the left 'all cops are bad' and I don't like this 'all DEI people are bad'

[Lee Moore]

There are lots of jobs that are oriented one way politically

Maybe so, but how many of those jobs consist of teaching political values ?

[Sarcastr0]

That is not required for the argument bevis is making. No new goalposts.

Your argument proves too much. Teachers generally lean left. Does that mean we should end teaching?

Also DEI folks generally don't teach, at least when wearing their DEI hat.

[Lee Moore]

We should certainly end teaching of politics in public schools. Chemistry is OK, so long as Chemistry-in-practice doesn’t turn out to be OmigodtheClimate ! (TM) in disguise.

PS I'm not confined to other people's damn goalposts

[Social Justice is neither]

How many of those are explicitly oriented towards the right vs the left? Thanks for pointing out the problem is much larger than just DEI Sarcastr0.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Cops are a flawed but necessary function, that could theoretically be improved if someone set their mind to it. IMO, DEI isn’t and can’t.

[Ed Grinberg]

you get a reinforcing loop that when put into practice is leaning massively toward one political side

from a recent Wall Street Journal interview with George Will:
Progressives really do think, he says, that “consciousness is to be transmitted by the government. And they’re working on it, starting with kindergarten. The academic culture, from the Harvard graduate school of education to kindergarten in Flagstaff, Ariz., is the same now, coast to coast, as far as I can tell.” A core mission of K-12 education, in the progressive view of things, is to inculcate the values of diversity and equity. This Marxian project of consciousness-formation is “all over the country now,” he says. “Think of the DEI statements you’re supposed to make. It’s the threshold step in being considered for a faculty position. You express support for, enthusiastic support for, a political agenda. It’s quite explicit.”
I point out that it isn’t recognized as a political agenda. “That’s right,” he agrees. “A political agenda is contingent. But if History is unfolding, it’s not a choice, it’s not contingent.”

[David Nieporent]

I mean, Will seems to ignore the fact that conservatives really do think that "consciousness is to be transmitted by the government. And they’re working on it, starting with kindergarten." The pledge of allegiance being recited every day is the most obvious example.

[y81]

Participation in the pledge of allegiance is voluntary. Participation in DEI exercises is generally not.
.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Is the pledge still a thing? My kids are between 26 and 33 and I don’t recall them being forced to do the pledge a decade+ ago when they were in school. I thought the morning PofA was long gone.

[Brett Bellmore]

There's a fundamental difference between "teaching that makes you feel uncomfortable" and "teaching that you should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of your race or sex."

One is just being (overly?) sensitive, the other is teaching collective guilt on the basis of immutable characteristics. If anything, states have a 14th amendment obligation not to allow their own agents to do the latter.

[DaveM]

This. "Collective guilt" is a fraud. There is zero relationship between the shade of your melanin and your degree of guilt. I am astonished we even let people claim that is the case.

[Randal]

I am astonished we even let people claim that is the case.

Nobody is claiming that. It's a Tucker Carlson boogeyman. The Democrats are all trying to rape your kids and turn them black! No, that's just Tucker's fantasy wonderland. (And Sarahbee's too it sounds like. Who knew?)

[Rossami]

On the contrary, rather a lot of the 'critical race theory' proponents are claiming precisely that. You don't have to take my word for it (or Tucker Carlson's) - you can read their own words.

[Sarcastr0]

If you're going to 'on the contrary' someone, you should bring evidence.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“Among the things prohibited in this EO was that “any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.”That white students could shut down discussions of “white privilege” and “structural inequality” because they make them uncomfortable is a most egregious affront to academic freedom.”

No, what’s prohibited in this and other policies is saying “any individual *should* feel discomfort,” etc. because of their race (or sex).

A student of Turkish heritage shouldn’t be able to block teaching about the murder of the Armenians simply because the subject makes “Turkish peoples” uncomfortable. But to point at the Turkish student and say, “this is all your fault, you should feel bad,” should be prohibited.

Teaching about street crime is perfectly OK even if it’s an uncomfortable subject. But to point to the black students and say, “shame on you people for committing all these crimes,” that should be illegal racial harassment.

Likewise with slavery and Jim Crow. You can teach it, you just can’t shame the white students by saying how bad they should feel about belonging to an oppressor race.

See the distinction?

[Longtobefree]

"See the distinction?"

No.
Because black people held slaves.
Indians held slaves.
Arabs held slaves.
Egyptians held slaves.
Everybody held slaves.
Slavery was an economic institution, not a racial one.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The point is that teaching should not be about trying to insult and offend the students.

Whether in a factory or a schoolroom, deliberately targeting an employee or student for harassment based on race is illegal, and was illegal before Trump or DeSantis got involved.

The nature of the harassment could be nasty racial humor or collective guilt for other people’s crimes, the point is that such targeted harassment is discriminatory.

I'm not agreeing with you about race and slavery - a complicated subject - I'm saying that a deliberate racial insult is a deliberate racial insult.

[David Nieporent]

Not in the U.S.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I was trying to rebut the idea that it violates "academic freedom" simply because teachers are forbidden from deliberately offending students with racial insults.

To be blunt, I’m not sure why Longtobefree wants to sidetrack this into a discussion of what slavery was like.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I'll add that, for instance, De Santis' policy forbids teaching racism, not simply because people get offended, but because racism is objectively wrong - so it's forbidden to teach racism, even if the teacher sincerely doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Huh? Indians and black people held slaves in the US.

[Sarcastr0]

Not in any numbers that make it less a white institution.

What even is that point anyhow? We're all saying 'this isn't about inherited guilt' and then this fallacious argument that rebuts only that thesis shows up.

[David Nieporent]

The claim that was made was that "Slavery was an economic institution, not a racial one." Slavery was a thoroughly racialized institution in the U.S.; only blacks were subject to chattel slavery.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Likewise with slavery and Jim Crow. You can teach it, you just can’t shame the white students by saying how bad they should feel about belonging to an oppressor race.

Margrave, your commentary needs reconsideration, to put the principle point of contention back into the debate. No one doubts that whatever happened, the Armenian genocide is a discreet historical occurrence, now long in the past. The point of contention with regard to anti-Black racism is allegation that Jim Crow-style racism—by both continuing effects of past practices, and also presently continuing practices—continues to inflict harm on Blacks today.

What you attempt is to define out of existence the point your adversaries demand that you confront. Some of those adversaries, Coates for one, have come to the fray bringing evidence. Anti-DEI ideology cannot be permitted to extend to ruling out consideration of that kind of evidence. But that is what many are trying to do.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Since the Turkish government to this day wants to deny and cover up the Armenian mass murders, I suppose you could call those crimes "discreet."

[DaveM]

Almost. The problem is not with “shaming”, it’s with assigning blame to categories of people instead of individuals. It’s simply unfair to accuse someone of a misdeed when you have no evidence of guilt. You got it right yourself when you used the phrase, “you people“. That’s the illegitimate part right there. “You people”. Anytime you find yourself using that phrase, it’s a sign you are glossing over the individual.

Collective guilt is a fraud. It really is just that simple, and, frankly, we shouldn’t allow anyone, ourselves included, to get away with it. Even at its best, it’s intellectually lazy, and almost certainly untrue in the particulars.

[Randal]

I think all this hiding behind a technicality (“should” vs. “does”) is an attempt to justify a policy that absolutely will enable white students to shut down discussions that make them uncomfortable.

The concept of white privilege doesn’t have anything to do with collective guilt or the idea that any individual should feel discomfort, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress. But lots of white students will feel those feelings, and I’m 100% sure that DeSantis’s law was intended to — and will — outlaw those discussions in practice.

The students will make some lame argument like… the very fact that I felt uncomfortable is proof that the curriculum was intended to make me feel uncomfortable, which means that it represents the proposition that I should feel uncomfortable, even if it doesn’t explicitly say that. The ultimate snowflake logic. And that’ll be enough to get it into court… and probably win, when the court asks the question whether conversations of white privilege were the sort of conversations the Florida legislature had in mind. There’s lot of evidence that they were.

[Lee Moore]

The concept of white privilege doesn’t have anything to do with collective guilt or the idea that any individual should feel discomfort, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress.

Yeah right. Now do "black crime."

[Sarcastr0]

Not sure what point you're trying to make, but you did provide a great contrast with the concept of white privilege.

Have you heard the folks talking about the stats on that? They are 1) abusing statistics, and 2) *absolutely* trying to blame black people collectively as the causal underpinning.

White privilege has some statistics proving it, but is primarily a sociological concept. And while it has some historical causality to, no one today is being blamed, except for embracing willful blindness because they feel blamed.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“And that’ll be enough to get it into court… and probably win”

To paraphrase one commenter, hypothetical future outrages are the worst kind of outrages. Let’s go right ahead and remove those judges for the bad decisions they’re going to make in the future.

[Nige]

'You can teach it, you just can’t shame the white students by saying how bad they should feel about belonging to an oppressor race.'

You can teach these things so long as they don't make anyone feel bad, despite their being utterly appalling stains on humanity.

[VinniUSMC]

It's impressive that you manage to post here considering your apparent inability to find 2 brain cells to rub together.

[Nige]

Two more than you.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I’m no expert, but teaching students of a particular race that they’re “utterly appalling stains on humanity” sounds like illegal racial harassment.

You might be interested to know that Florida public schools are required to teach slavery, and that Gov. DeSatan’s white-supremacist censorship bill added a requirement that “Students shall develop an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on individual freedoms, and examine what it means to be a responsible and respectful person, for the purpose of encouraging tolerance of diversity in a pluralistic society and for nurturing and protecting democratic values and institutions.”

https://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Documents/loaddoc.aspx?FileName=_h0007er.docx&DocumentType=Bill&BillNumber=0007&Session=2022

[TwelveInchPianist]

"This is not how they are administered, this is just they use terminology you don’t like. It makes me cringe as well..."

They didn't that that was how they are administered, they said that that was the terminology they use. And it sounds like you don't like it either. So what's your beef?

[Sarcastr0]

Do you find this a neutral statement: You know the language of DEI Inc. when you hear it?

[Jmaie]

If it seems derogatory to you, I suggest it's because you're used to having DEI attacked on this forum by those on the right and this bothers you. If you disagree, please quote something in those two paragraphs that is explicitly negative. Or incorrect.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Jamie, as generalizations applied out of context to an alleged administrative style, it is all inapplicable to any particular case. When it comes down to particular instances, you cannot assume any of it is correct.

If you find abuses of some kind in the administration of a particular case, that is relevant to that case. It might deliver grounds to decide the case differently. It does not apply at all as critique of another case elsewhere involving different facts and different people.

If you attempt to adduce general principles to attack DEI as illegitimate administrative activity, you will discover yourself far afield. You will struggle to generalize assertions about history and contemporary sociology which will be almost impossible to prove. Any attempt to do that is more likely to clarify that attacks on DEI are founded more on the political power to do it than they are on any facts (other than inherently limited case-specific facts) anti-DEI critics can bring to the debate.

[Sarcastr0]

I could absolutely be being defensive. Though I do think beyond looking at individual offices, some criticism of DEI as an institution are legit - see Randal above.

Or maybe DEI Inc. as the choice for a collective appellation, alongside ‘you can always spot them by how they talk’ is just overgeneralizing based on animus not on content.

[Lee Moore]

just overgeneralizing based on animus not on content

White privilege is on the phone and would like to discuss this concept of "overgeneralizing" with you.

[Sarcastr0]

No worries there - recognizing that one attribute confers privilege does not require ignoring all others, like class, that may do the opposite.

[Lee Moore]

recognizing that one attribute confers privilege does not require ignoring all others, like class, that may do the opposite

Nevertheless one does have to wonder about the selection of “white privilege” for study, and worry, and correction -“check your privilege” – when all the other much more important sources of privilege don’t seem to make it onto the curriculum.

Obviously “white privilege” is an exceedingly weak form of privilege, since the vast majority of white folk are not, or not very, successful; and since non whites – eg people of East and South Asian heritage, not to mention black folk from the Caribbean are proportionately more successful than whites.

In reality, of course, “intelligence privilege”, “conscientiousness privilege”, “good looks privilege”, "self confidence privilege", “articulateness privilege”, “good habits inculcated by your parents privilege” and “money privilege” are all much more important than “blotchy pink privilege” or “class privilege”. But how many classes get taught on those ?

What I think we’ve really got is “lefty ideology privilege.” Or in the vernacular – DEI.

[Absaroka]

"Or maybe DEI Inc. as the choice for a collective appellation"

How do you feel about the terms 'military-industrial complex', 'prison-industrial complex', etc.

To me, they are shorthand for something that is a valid concern. You don't expect Lockheed-Martin to say 'we feel that the current fighter jet is good enough for the foreseeable future', and you do expect the DEA to say 'we need more $$$ to fight the growing epidemic of drug-of-the-week', etc.

Similarly, I don't expect the Dean of Inclusive Excellence to say 'you know, the kidz these days really don't give a hoot about people's races of bedroom preferences, so my budget could be better spent elsewhere'. As long as diversity bureaucracies are staffed by human beings, they are going to be subject to the same foibles as executives of defense contractors, the head of Homeland Security, and the head of the prison guards union.

'DEI Inc' and 'military-industrial complex' are just useful reminders of that feature of human nature. It's fine to say 'we need a new generation of attack submarines', and make the case for that, but objecting to the use of 'military-industrial complex' as pejorative is a pretty weak argument in the debate over whether we need new subs.

[Sarcastr0]

The 2 examples you pick include explicit coordination and planning, albeit openly so not a conspiracy. That is not a charge being leveled at the DEI folks in the OP.

Randal says something similar to what you're talking about regarding bad incentives to encourage problems you can solve. While that is an issue in every institution, given how recent most DEI offices are, I could see it being more expressed there than elsewhere.

[y81]

"You know the language of DEI Inc. when you hear it" seems like a neutral factual statement. You know the language of evangelical Christianity when you hear "washed in the blood of the Lamb"; you know the language of mainstream Republicanism when you hear "the free enterprise system." Sometimes one side co-opts the other's language, which can be confusing, as when anti-vaxxers say "my body, my choice" to the outrage of my liberal friends. Saturday Night Live had a funny skit on that a couple years ago.

[Michael Ejercito]

How in the world did universities ever function without DEI?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Ejercito, any need for it was obviated by normatively practiced discrimination on a massive scale.

[Krayt]

Someone needs to start pointing out that, no, Congress is not about to yank your university's money becuse you didn't fire such and such an asshole.

The last thing politicians want is a case over yanking money because a professor said some stuff in class to get to the Supreme Court.

[bevis the lumberjack]

In a quasi-related note, last week FIRE published their annual list of the 10 worst colleges for free speech for 2023, including a coveted Lifetime Censorship Award to Georgetown University, who joins luminaries like Yale and DePaul and Syracuse on the high achievers list.

https://www.thefire.org/news/10-worst-colleges-free-speech-2023

Interesting to note that although the DEI folks have (as expected) substantial representation on the list, there are also several colleges that are censoring from the other side of the political spectrum. Y'all love it when I say this, I know, so just for the sake of aggravation I'll note that this is an issue driven by both sides.

[Nige]

Yesterday's post with the paper on cancel culture in universities was a bit too nuanced, was it?

[Nige]

'Education is a product, students are consumers, and campus diversity is a customer-service issue that needs to be administered from the top down.'

So the problem is the commodification of education? That it takes a corporate approach to these issues, with an thickening layer of middle-management and consultancies? Yeah. I can agree with that, but that could require a structual analysis of how universities are operated, and that might be woke.

[Ed Grinberg]

Close all public colleges & universities. Let private educational institutions be as "diverse" (or non-"diverse") as they like, and teach whatever "woke" stuff they want.

[mydisplayname]

An excellent paper. It is refreshing to hear a member of the academy suggest that other members "should also know that there is no academic freedom without academic responsibility. Academic freedom is not a license to mouth off or teach whatever material suits our fancy. Moreover, when thorny issues arise pertaining to classroom instruction, we have a responsibility to listen to students' concerns and take them seriously. This does not mean, however, that students should be able to dictate the curriculum."

It is also refreshing to see in this blog post the term "right" properly linked to a labor union postulation rather than to any document ratified by the people forming any recognized government: abuse of the privilege to teach may result in its loss, once again leading me to note that restrictions on an institution's behavior often tend to preserve the institution at large.